We had been awake for hours in our room, just listening to the sounds of the summer rain thunder. The curtains were still down, the room plunged into comfy darkness.
Between happy chatter and lazy caresses, Carlos and l laid together, willing to postpone leaving bed for as much as possible. We were back at The Hideout. After the fire it was been fully refurbished.
A little music started to repeat itself, muffled and coming from the pocket of Carlos' jeans on the floor.
'No. Not again...' He complained as his cellphone started to ring for the second time around. Unable to ignore it again, he slid in bed with a pissed off grunt and stretched his arm towards the floor to retrieve the phone.
'Holla Maricon. Why don't you pick up anymore, like, ever?'
'Bruno, bitch, some of us have a life.' Carlos joked. 'I am with my lady so this better be important.'
'You forgot, hermano. Again. Today is the fifth, you are supposed to collect the cash from your share of the hoods.'
'Damn.' He sighed, looking regretfully at me lying down over the sheets in a lacy nightgown. 'Totally slip my mind. Shit.'
'I'll wait for you, we can go together.'
'Thanks Bruno. I am on my way.'
'Wait, let me fill up and buy some cigs before we go.' Bruno said as the purple Attrazione passed by a gas station.
'Don't take long. I am meeting The Boss later.' Carlos agreed lazily, parking the car.
While he filled the tank up, Bruno entered the gas station store do do his purchase. Instead, however, of going straight for the counter, he looked anxiously around as if he was expecting to find someone there.
'Hey.'
His gaze met a tall bearded man leaning over a pinball machine, in a red hat and a torn shirt. This man dropped the game immediately and walked towards Bruno, followed by a group of people equally dressed in red.
'In here.' The man in the trucker hat pointed to a nearby door with a sideways glance. It opened to a back alley so they could speak without been disturbed.
As soon as they had privacy Bruno looked away while he swallowed some saliva before starting. What he was about to say was difficult or at least made him very unease:
'Outside in the Attrazione. No other back up but me. I think it makes us even.'
The man seemed satisfied, but frowned after a short pause:
'Hold on. What the fuck with 'it makes us even? You think that you can just walk away owning us 5k?'
'I... I thought the deal was for...'
'...Half your debt that's right.'
'I don't have it... Now, but give me another week and...'
'...Right.' The Brotherhood Lieutenant shook his head with frustration. He turned his head to the other five members significantly.
'Wait! You guys told me if I gave you Carlos it should be...!' His sentence was cut short. The thugs surrounded him and twisted his arm behind his back.
'Tell you what: We'll take you along with your little friend for a ride then.'
'NO!'
Bruno kicked and twisted himself in an attempt to escape, while the rest promptly beat him back into submission. Carlos' best friend was in tears as they dragged him along. He didn't know exactly what they meant by that ride, but he knew there was going to be payback on The Boss and now, he was a part of it.
I waited for quite a while in front of Club Koi, but Carlos never came.
I looked up to the horizon and saw heavy clouds gathering and partially covering the sun, an unexpected buff of wind passed, taking leaves from the ground with it, making me shiver and button up my coat.
A drop of water fell on my nose, another came to join it and slid down my forehead.
I retreated under the cover of the roof, the raindrops multiplied, turning some spots in the asphalt darker.
It looked like a storm was on it's way.
30 minutes later...
My phone was ringing and after all that time waiting I grew pretty impatient when I saw the incoming call was from Carlos. If he was going to be so damn late, why didn't he call before?
'Carlos, where the fuck are you?' I answered, incarnating the forsaken girlfriend.
But oddly, there was a woman's voice and not his on the other side of the line:
'I think your people skills need some work sweetie.'
'Who the fuck is this?' I tensed up, immediately understanding that if someone else had his phone something went wrong with Carlos.
'Well, I just wanted to let you know that since you were nice enough to give my man a makeover, I should return the favor...don't worry, by the time we're through with him Carlos'll look just as handsome as Maero.'
To think of how, in such a small frame of time: One minute, a few seconds, everything can go down like this. All crumble without an explanation. You're just left to accept that, in a blink of an eye, what matters most can be gone.
'Jessica! Listen up you fucking bitch...!' I snapped as if she fatally stabbed me. 'You're fucking DEAD you whore! You're fucking dead!'
I was on some sort of auto-pilot. As soon as I hung up the phone my mind was desperately coming up with something, and I recalled already that Donnie was a member of The Brotherhood and a close friend of Maero's.
I knew the address of his garage so I frantically jumped on the car raced towards it.
He retreated with the fear of his life as he saw me kill my way towards the inside of his business, as if he saw death itself on the flesh.
It was safe to assume then, by all this fright, that bastard knew something and it wasn't a wasted trip.
I picked up a vise and beat up Donnie so much in the head and the legs, he had no other option but to decide to face between Maero's wrath and mine, and spit everything.
'They told me they were taking him for a ride at the docks...'
I left him half dead in his garage and ran back to the car while grabbing my phone in the same motion.
'GAT! I need back up! Everyone at the docks, they have Carlos!'
'Boss! Hang on! Where...? What the fuck is goin o..?!'
'I don't know! Jessica called!' I cut abruptly, all my senses concentrated into driving, in an absolute frenzy of dread, of escalated panic. I thought I had time, but The Brotherhood was already taking action.
'He will be dead! He will be dead!'
It was insanity, reality was altered.
Something in me was torn already, whispering that the cause was lost. The end of the world wouldn't be close to what I was experiencing then, behind that wheel. I drove around as fast as humanly possible, reminding myself I had barely an idea where I was going to but I had to get there fast, because Carlos was dying.
Instinctively, I was looking for the docks, but I was far across town. I tore through the jammed avenues by the oncoming land, almost failing to dodge an ambulance.
'He will be dead by the time you get there! He will be dead! Oh God, please! No, no, no!'
Each second felt as a death sentence. I had no clue if the direction I was taking was correct. Finally, after some random twists and turns I saw some indications to my destination.
The docks district was almost empty, and only the sound of police sirens at a distance seemed to break the calmness of the place.
I turned around the neighborhood more than once, looking for any sign of red color on the streets. Until, many minutes after, I finally spotted a Brotherhood truck. I looked inside for any signs of Carlos. But the tragedy was I didn't understand any of it until I saw something else at the back of the vehicle:
To my horror a human figure, dressed in purple, was chained to the back of that truck.
'I am coming Carlos, I am gonna stop the truck!' I yelled.
They were shooting back at me.
Viciously, but carefully not to hit him, I speed up and discharged my gun on the driver and the others in the car. I did everything as fast as possible so he wouldn't be dragged any further.
The truck stopped ahead on the road, pierced in a thousand holes and I hit the break. I left the car and started to run towards the man chained to the truck.
Across the district...
Unaware to The Boss and in a more discrete street, a red jeep drove around as fast as the one she followed. Carlos was slipping in a sort of semi-consciousness. He recalled the screams of his friend as they chained him to the back of a truck and the vehicle took off: How those bastards did it in front of him so he could foresee what was going to happen to him as well.
Then the jeep took off and the pain temporarily erased everything that happened before. With lightning speed he thought of The Boss. Of his brother.
'This is it. This is the end. I am gonna die now.' He said to himself, with that weird detachment that only the closeness of death can bring.
His body was nothing more than a single aching wound.
But then, Carlos heard police sirens, and shots.
'The cops are after us.' He still could reason. For a moment he felt a glimpse of hope and grasped to it. But to his despair the car accelerated further.
On purpose, the driver slid from left to right, wishing to increase the victim's impact on the ground.
As the truck took a hard turn, the Saint was thrown into the grass on the side of the road with intentional violence.
The last thing Carlos felt was that something on his ankle gave in, the chain broke as his heavily injured, unconscious body rolled down the hill for several meters and into the sewer canal below.
At that same time, on the other side of the district:
The Boss stopped, bending on her knees.
His clothes were torn beyond recognition.
What was in front of her could not be living anymore.
Most of the flesh was ripped away like it was scrubbed by an iron brush, but this bloody mess still had a torso, part of the limbs and what used to be a head.
It looked like a meatball, a puppet, or something that was too damaged to be even called a body.
The fact that the fleshy thing covered in blood still had a head, most of it's arms and legs, suggested that this macabre and incomplete jigsaw once belonged to a human being.
I remember hearing continued screams in my head, my own screams. Something seared in all of my self. Carlos. What have they done to you?
Through a fog, Gat unexpectedly running in my direction with a strange expression of pain and shock. He held me in place like doctors hold enraged mental patients, trying to knock me out. But he couldn't.
In my mind, behind the shattering craziness all I thought about was of Carlos pain, and that I was responsible for it. I provoked Maero, he payed the price.
I think I ran back to the car and tore away. I also think, though I am not really sure, that I walked, walked for a long time. Tears, surely. Maybe I sat at a fountain, or next to the river because the presence of water seemed to be there at some point. Though why? I couldn't say. I only suffered terribly for the first hours. Then it all faded, I remember walking and walking again, but it was my body simply that kept on going. My soul seemed gone with him.
And blurred like all the moments that followed this tragedy, so was reality.
I was gone for a very long time.
Brotherhood's Hideout:
We'll find Jessica and Maero in the living room of their crib. She was siting at the edge of an old armchair, telling the gang leader about Donnie been attacked. Turned out he succumbed to his injuries while been rushed at the hospital.
Matt, Maero's best friend and this other woman of the gang came in, holding a laptop. Besides being an active member of The Brotherhood, the tattooed blond also played the guitar for a famous Rock group.
'Maero, check this out.'
'Fuck. Not now Matt, Donnie just died.' Jessica replied. 'We're off for today.'
'Not for this you're not! One of our boys was taking a walk through the Dome and filmed something you guys will be definitely glad to see...' The Feed Dog's guitarist seemed excited.
'Well, what is it?' Maero said, intrigued. He and Jessica got closer behind Matt, their heads touching so they could see it in the screen.
The quality of the video was awful and it didn't help that the weather was so dark, but they could see a defeated silhouette sitting on the Adept Way bridge, legs close to the body and leaning helplessly against the iron bars, touching it with the skin of her face like it was a dear presence.
A few pedestrians were hastily passing by as the rain became a true downpour, opening their umbrellas or improvising one with a newspaper or magazine.
The camera zoomed into the face of the leader of the Saints.
She closed her eyes, and didn't move, merely raised the collar of her leather jacket and stood still, large drops of rain flowing down from the hair into her make up smudged face.
Maero smiled broadly and tapped Matt's shoulder in satisfaction. Jessica was laughing her ass out and hysterically repeating.
'Play it again!'
'I hope you learned the lesson.' Maero spat at the screen, caressing the large scars on his face. Those were a 'gift' from The Boss and the local Nuclear Power Plant. 'You look less cocky when you are wiping for the pool cleaner who was banging you, you fucking bitch.'
The next morning, Saints HQ:
Cries of rage shook the underground to its core.
The gang members were restless. The worst possible insults were echoing through the underground, claiming vengeance for Carlos. The rain outside never stopped, like a constant reminder of their loss.
As Gat just came in to change his soaked clothes, people gathered around the Second in Command and grabbed him successively by the arm in a request for news.
He shook his head negatively to Pierce and Shaundi, who were organizing a searching mission with their crew.
Shaundi's face was contorted with sadness. Eyes swollen and red from crying, and so was Pierce's.
Only Gat seemed to, at least in appearance, have his shit together.
He spent the whole day and night out looking for The Boss, unable to predict what she could've done next in such a state. Johnny contacted Max in the middle of the night, in the hope that Payne's remarkable wit would come up with something. The ex-cop, alarmed and heartbroken by the news, had joined the Saints on their search but with no success.
So far every effort was proven in vain, when, without warning and any fuss, The Boss herself came back home.
As she walked pass the hallway calmly to her room without a word and like nothing happened, her presence created understandingly some commotion.
Johnny ran upstairs, imposing the others to remain in place with a gesture.
He found The Boss sitting in bed, completely soaked.
'Take off these clothes.' He was surprised, and insisted. 'You gonna get sick.'
She didn't even blink, and answered in a voice totally devoid of emotion.
'No, I'm all right.'
She kept sitting there, blank expression, drops of rain dripping from her nose and hair.
Johnny slowly took one step back, uncomfortable. It was like an iron hand was gripping his heart.
It suddenly hit him, for the first time, that she wasn't the invincible entity he always thought her to be. You had to see such a transition to believe it.
The years they spent together gave him the false conviction she was invulnerable to anything and impervious to weakness. Like nothing could bend her.
But now he simply understood that this was a misconception. His tough friend and iron willed boss wasn't standing in front of him now.
He was staring at a totally fucked up, defeated person.
'God. What the fuck happened to you? Fucking Brotherhood! How can I help you now Boss? What can I do? I can't stand seeing you like this' His heart was flooding with compassion and sadness for the loyal friend that was always at his side, and that he loved so much.
He took one step towards her and removed her soaked leather jacket.
'Gimme that. You gotta be freezing.'
He never knew what to say or do in such situations, apart from practical help.
So he simply kneeled down and took off her high heels, she let him do as he pleased and didn't react. Only when he looked at her feet, he noticed that the strap dug into the flesh from all the walking and ripped it open. She didn't seem to be aware of any of it though.
'Here Boss.'
He hugged her waist with one arm, easily lifting her and heading towards the bathroom, opening the door with his free hand.
They both stood up in the tub, he was fully dressed but got in too, still holding her up from behind just in case she would slip, and turned the red knob all the way to make the water temperature as high as possible.
She leant one arm on the tiles and stood there, floppy posture, Gat had the impression he was no longer holding a human, but a puppet.
He pushed her carefully towards the flow and let the water do it's job and warm her up.
'We're going to take care of you now.' He whispered, affectionate, as he pulled back the wet hair falling on her forehead.
He didn't bother saying anything else. He knew she was in shock, it was more important to dry her up and put her to sleep.
He thought of asking Shaundi to help him, but dismissed this thought soon. No, no one else in the gang should see her like that.
He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her body, then started to remove her wet clothing from underneath it. When she was reasonably dry, he stretched one arm to grab a bathrobe hanging from a hook in the wall.
'I'm not going to look.' He said a bit awkwardly, even if he knew she probably wouldn't listen to it.
He tossed the towel on the ground and put the robe's sleeves one by one, wrapping the string on the waist to close it. Gat then grabbed another dry towel sat her back in bed.
'Now let's dry up and then you go to sleep. I will give you some pills, ok?'
He saw her nodding and started to gently rub the strands on the fibers, his hands so huge it covered her head entirely.
He gave her a narcotic with a huge serving of whisky and gently put her back in bed.
Finally, he changed his clothes and got himself ready to sleep, but his mind kept him awake in spite of all tiredness. He wondered if that night was going to ever end, at all.
The Boss saw someone lying next to her over the covers and for a second her mind was tricked, she jumped a bit out of sleep, only to discover Johnny's two colored hairstyle. She sunk her head painfully, and the movement on the mattress made him wake up.
'Did it really happen, Gat?' She asked, stoned dumb from all the pills.
Johnny felt a discharge of pain jolt across his chest at that question, but simply nodded slowly and sadly. 'We're here for you.'
'I want the body retrieved. He needs a proper funeral.' The Boss stated without emotion.
'I am on it.' He assured, but from the blank stare in her eye Gat understood she wasn't listening anymore.
Wow it was hard to write this chapter since I absolutely hate the 'Red Asphalt' mission in SR2. But you know there will be a twist to this story so hold on tight. Please review! :3